


call me but love, and I'll be new baptized

by sareli



Category: Deep Space Nine
Genre: 5+1 Things, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:40:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24699961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sareli/pseuds/sareli
Summary: In a way, it makes it all the more exhilarating that a human uses his name like a tool, like a weapon.Like a Cardassian.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 11
Kudos: 78





	call me but love, and I'll be new baptized

**Author's Note:**

> mostly an exercise in voice and aesthetics aka me kicking around in a brand new sandbox but I really wanted to get it right (which is why this is technically a repost even though it wasn't up that long the first time) !  
> ~  
> meant to take place between The Wire and the end of season 3, but exact chronology gets less important as it goes on.

> _"Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine."_

**1.**

" _Especially_ the lies," says Garak, and from the look on the boy's face, Garak knows he has won this round.

After all that Bashir had witnessed over the past week and a half, the small victory is not yet enough to put Garak back on his preferred footing with Bashir- that is to say, a good half-step ahead- but Garak is confident in his abilities to make it all up and then some in good time.

The flow of their conversation then turns back to a more natural bedrock of literature, and Garak watches the features of Bashir's face jump and contract as he navigates the themes and subtleties of the Cardassian epic poem that Garak had suggested he read next so long ago, the last time they had met under normal circumstances.

“Ah, I think I see now," Bashir says eventually, arriving at his conclusion. "The name, to our hero, is precious. He guards it closely, not just because it has the potential to be his undoing, almost like sacrificing an arm or a limb, but also because it is a test to those around him. Those who are truly loyal to him will know better than to accept what he is on the surface, while those who do not hold him in high regard take him at face value.”

“Remarkable, Doctor. I do think-“

“That there is hope for me yet?” Bashir says with an impish grin. Garak concedes with only a nod.

“Yes, well,” says Bashir, smile softening from a petulant beam into something entirely different as he rises from his seat. His hand lands almost carelessly on Garak’s shoulder as he makes to pass behind him. “I was bound to catch on sometime or another, wasn’t I?”

Before Garak is able to anticipate the doctor’s next move in his body language, Bashir has already swooped down, nearly cheek to cheek with Garak but not quite, his breath curling over the shell of Garak’s ear like a caress as he says, in a voice barely above a whisper:

_"Elim."_

And then the doctor is on his way, leaving Garak indisputably in the dust.

**2.**

The way the human says it is somehow different than Garak ever could have expected, possibly something to do with the Universal Translator failing to recognize most names as words meriting translation. As such, the softness of Bashir's natural speech patterns bleed through. Garak immediately revels in the way his name is held in Bashir’s mouth, like a gentle sigh stroked by the delicate roll of his tongue over the “l”, the warm murmur at the end; " Ee-lihmmm."

Garak finds himself leaning into it so much that he rises from his own seat, caught in the gravity of the sound of his own name, falling toward it like a photon tumbling over a vast event horizon. He catches up with Bashir quickly, closing his hand around the doctor's wrist and dragging him just out of sight of the bustle of the Promenade, pressing him into the nearest darkened corner they come across.

“What did you just call me?”

Bashir doesn’t move, but holds Garak’s gaze defiantly, lifting his chin rather than shying away from Garak’s snarls of warning.

"Elim,” says Bashir, flicking his tongue over his own parted lips and leaning in just a hair's breadth.

It’s all Garak can do to keep from devouring the boy right here in the corridor, their lips and tongues and limbs tangle together all the same.

Against his mouth, Bashir is smiling.

**3.**

All quiet on the habitat ring. Darkness had fallen along its corridors, lit only by an eerie half-light just enough to see by during the hours that constituted station's night. There was always a shift crew working somewhere, of course, but the station quieted considerably when the Promenade emptied out and its civilian populace retreated to their quarters until station's daybreak however many hours later.

Garak had developed a fondness for this time during which the mindless chatter of unimportant life forms was now blissfully filtered out for him, rather than having to do it himself.

This night in particular, he finds himself stirred from his nocturnal reverie by the sound of footsteps creeping closer. Garak whips around just in time to see the unmistakable shape of Doctor Bashir emerge from the half-dark.

In recent days, Garak had heard murmurs of an attempt to locate the Founders, and further whispers of the senior officers' extended foray beyond the wormhole, but frustratingly little else. Doctor Bashir had been among them, his absence from the replimat for their usual midday repast doubly felt.

"You're here. Oh, thank God," Bashir breathes, surging forward to enfold Garak in one of those strange full-body human embraces and crashing into Garak's chest with considerable force. Once the initial impact of it has dissipated, Garak finds himself leaning into it, the mammalian warmth a comfort against the pervasive frigidness of this extra-Cardassial wasteland.

"Yes, Doctor," Garak allows himself to splutter, betraying the barest hint of his confusion before collecting himself. "Is there some reason I shouldn't be?"

Bashir pulls back, settling his forehead against Garak's own as he draws a ragged breath.

"I thought you were dead. I saw you die- I _felt_ you die. Felt the life slip right out of you through my fingers. God, it was all so real."

Bashir's fingers tighten around Garak's arms where they had come to rest.

"My dear Doctor, I assure you, I am quite difficult to get rid of."

Garak makes the slightest overtures toward extracting himself from Bashir's arms, but he is only grasped that much tighter in response.

"Don't go. Please. Elim."

"Come now--" Garak cannot bring himself to call the man 'Doctor,' but for some reason he cannot find it within himself to call him anything else, either. "I am here now. And I am not going anywhere."

**4.**

Garak does not ask if Bashir ever figures out that when he uses Garak’s first name, Garak cannot lie to him. Garak does not ask because he already knows the answer. There is a deliberateness to the instances in which Bashir chooses to employ the use of Garak's first name. He uses it sparingly, like a precious resource. So infrequently, in fact, that by the time he does it next, Garak has come dangerously close to being lulled into forgetting that the boy even knows.

In a way, it makes it all the more exhilarating that a human uses his name like a tool, like a weapon.

Like a Cardassian.

But in this case, the weapon isn’t live, it is a tool meant not to harm but merely to disarm, strip Garak bare and hold him in place.

"Elim."

Bashir comes to the ruins of Garak's shop shortly after Odo has left, Garak's damned sentimentality keeping him here long enough for the doctor to find him.

"You’ve been avoiding me."

All at once, the wheels start turning in Garak’s mind, but he finds himself coming up empty.

The simple recounting his human companion could not help but ask for would be too meandering, obfuscated with compounded complexity “ _Why, my dear Doctor, I have simply been collecting myself after encountering for the first time in years my estranged father who, by the way, is not supposed to be my father...”_

But then, what lie was to take its place? What could Garak possibly say that would point to all the right pieces without revealing how they fit?

One thing is for sure, Garak cannot afford to affectionately think of him as a boy anymore, he knows too much. That much is certain as Bashir takes notice of the silence stretching out just a little too long and draws closer, saying once again, impossibly soft but determined as ever:

“Elim.”

Somewhere inside, Garak is revisited by the distinct sensation of lying on his back against the icy metal floor, the shop he had built turned by his own hand to flaming rubble around him, and Julian Bashir's steadying palm against his shoulder.

**5.**

They lie on their sides facing each other, cheeks pressed into the layer of fine, silken emerald fabric that adorns Garak’s bed. The velvety covering, also a deep green, drapes over them both, pooling between their otherwise unclad bodies. The air is just as thick and heavy between them, and this does not relent even when Garak finally elects to break the silence that had settled in around them.

“Did you know that I once drove a man to confession simply by looking at him? That is... a confession of his true budget for a wedding gown for which he was on the hook.”

Dear Julian just smirks up at Garak beneath his lashes, not once breaking his gaze.

“And how would I come to know a thing like that?”

“People talk. It is a distinct possibility that you’ve even met him, he was a medical man himself as I recall.”

“I think I would remember.”

“Pity, I really should look him up sometime. Introduce you.”

“Must’ve been quite the death stare you gave him.”

“Oh, it only took an hour... or four.”

“Four? I must admit, I am hardly impressed. In fact, I could swear we have been lying here for nearly that long ourselves, and I haven't broken yet.”

Garak tilts his head upwards to glance at a nearby chronometer.

“I daresay, Doctor, I do believe you might be right.”

“Doctor,” Julian snorts. “Please. You have to stop calling me that. At least now. At least here.”

“All right,” Garak says. “What shall I call you then? Julian?”

“That would be perfect—”

This time, he is able to anticipate it, letting it break over him like a wave of molten ore, the radiant impossibility of being known.

“Elim.”

They lapse back into silence once again, watching each other's eyes until long after four hours have rolled past on the chronometer.

**+1**

The observation deck glows an eerie deep indigo, illuminated by the violet-blue swirling of the wormhole just beyond the station. An empty bottle lies forgotten on its side, having rolled some ways from the blanket, discarded alongside the first few articles of clothing. Julian lies astride Garak, their legs weaving together, the downward swoop of his spine and neck silhouetted against the dazzling view as he dips his head downward to catch his partner’s mouth again, again, again...

Garak rolls his hips upwards, and Julian moans just one word into the next kiss:

“Julian.”

A shiver rolls down Garak’s spine as he pulls his head back, staring quizzically up into Julian’s eyes, which have fluttered open and flooded Garak with an intense and indecipherable expression.

And Garak has always considered himself fairly skilled with ciphers.

Julian holds his gaze for just a moment longer before dipping his head back down and murmuring “Julian” once again, this time meeting Garak in a kiss that could only be described as bruising.

Garak responds in kind, sliding his hands downward and squeezing the backs of Julian’s thighs, as if trying to pull Julian somehow closer than he already was.

“Julian,” Julian all-but growls, the pace and fervor of his kisses picking up simultaneously as they flutter down the side of Garak’s neck. “Julianjulianjulian”

A soft gasp escapes Garak’s throat as Julian lines himself up against him, seconds away from pressing inside.

It isn’t usually like this. Julian is typically more partial to being the one to spread himself open for Garak, letting himself be pressed up against the bed, the floor, the wall, ever-yielding, ever-permitting.

But there’s something different tonight. And he wants Garak to figure out what it is. And he is not going to move any further until Garak does.

Fortunately, Garak has always been skilled with ciphers.

“Elim,” he exhales, and Julian sighs as he finally spreads Garak open and begins to move within him.

“Eee-lihmmm,” Garak breathes again, almost without meaning to.

“ _Fuck_ , Julian. ”

"Elim."

“Julian.”

"Elim. Elim. Elim."

And on and on like this until neither is sure where one ends and one begins, which is Julian and which is Elim.

**Author's Note:**

> title from R+J, epigraph from Isaiah 43:1
> 
> thanks for reading!


End file.
